Did you argue politics with relatives over the holiday weekend? My Trumpster kin had nothing to say about their orange idol. I suspect they’re ashamed of him but too stubborn to admit it.

I’d like to think that’s progress, but I know better; they still believe the same stupid shit that made them vote for a racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue in the first place.

Over the weekend, I read a Washington Monthly piece by Daniel Block about Democrats in deep red areas — kinda the opposite of the Deploraville safari articles about “heartland” Trump voters.

There’s a lot of truth to it, IMO. Here’s an excerpt:

Reporters have descended on conservative bastions like Augusta, as well as counties that recently flipped from blue to red, in a bid to understand how a reality television star became president. They have spoken to longtime, working-class conservatives and ex-Democrats who, through Trump, finally found a vehicle through which to express their political frustrations. In doing so, they’ve routinely painted a picture of Trump-voting America so predictable that it has become a trope. Yet very few journalists have chosen to focus on the Democrats in Trump country who stayed Democrats…

But even in places like Augusta County, thousands of people voted for Hillary Clinton. No depiction of Trump country is complete without them. Most of their neighbors may be standing by the president, but if Augusta is any indication, Democrats in rural red counties are just as fired up and enthused as their counterparts in liberal cities. In Virginia’s Sixth Congressional District, which includes Augusta, no Democrat has mounted a midterm congressional campaign in twenty years. This year, four people ran…

As more activists come out of the woodwork, the Democratic Party gains more people like Frank Nolen: human faces who can make the party more accessible to residents with hidden liberal inclinations. This is critical for the party’s fortunes. Building a viable electoral infrastructure depends on making it socially acceptable to be a Democrat.

Ironic, isn’t it, that the people who belong to the party that opposes an abusive, corrupt, would-be authoritarian degenerate are the ones who suffer social consequences for that. But it’s a reality that many of us live on the daily. That’s part of the reason you won’t find me boo-hooing over Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ comped cheese plate or pitying Tucker Carlson for blowback to his hate-mongering.

Fox News feeds its viewers a steady diet of “oppressed conservatives in Hollywood” stories and plays up incidents where its wealthy hate-mongers are harassed by ordinary citizens. The Fox News audience eats that victimization shit up — all the while engaging in subtle and overt intimidation tactics against neighbors with different political views.

The Post has an article today by doctoral candidate Emily Van Duyn about Democratic women secretly organizing in a deep red part of Texas. Some of the women in the underground group she studied shared why they’re unwilling to “come out” as Democrats:

The existence of this group does more than tell us about 136 women in a small county in Texas. Their experience of fear and intimidation challenges assumptions about democracy in the United States. That is, in a truly liberal democracy, people should be able to voice their views without fear of retaliation.

These women’s choice to engage and persist underground also challenges us to reconsider the privilege of being publicly political and the possibility that the things we see on the surface in our communities, the yard signs, the bumper stickers, are not the whole story.

It’s not the whole story, and we can’t write off the folks in those places. I know it’s tempting to give up on red areas — I live in one, and sometimes I think the best solution is to re-stage Sherman’s march. In a post about radicalized rural kids earlier this week, Mistermix observed:

This is not to say that radicalized rural kids aren’t a problem – but the problem is bigger than that. The Senate and the Electoral College over-represent states that intelligent progressive kids want to leave. Maybe, as Deb and James Fallows have reported, some of these kids will stay and enlarge blue dots in otherwise conservative states. But why bother when you can just move a few hundred miles away and not have to deal with the narrow minds and poverty of spirit that infects rural America?

I don’t have a good answer to that dilemma for individuals. I fled my conservative home turf as a young person too, only to ultimately return. But as a society, if we want to have a functioning democracy (and maybe even avoid a second civil war), those of us who do choose to remain in red areas — people like Cole, some of you, and me — have to do the hard work of building an electoral infrastructure, as outlined in the Washington Monthly piece.

argued politics with my mom, who claims to be an independent but is a gooper through and through. you can tell she’s disappointed cause she just both sides the shit out of everything. apparently, clinton lying about a blow job is the exact same as every bullshit thing trump has done combined. “they’re all crooks!”

My husband and I both joked about leaving the country when Trump was elected. Sometimes we still say we would like to leave the country because the people we despise keep gaining ground.

But that’s wrong. When things are bad, you can’t run. You have to stay and try to change them. Staying here, we voted. We made a difference in the House. We can make a difference again and again. There’s no quitting.

I don’t know Betty. You’re right, of course, but it has to be people who were born there. People like me are outsiders no matter how long we live in rural areas. And though I was on friendly terms with a lot of my neighbors, a lot of them really are hateful people who were only decent to me because I was white and was decent first.

I want them (and only them) to live in their dystopian ideal of how things should be. It’s the only cure. Some will learn better and some will die as an outcome of what they advocate. And I’m sorry about that but in the end we all have choices and that’s what they consistently choose.
Edit: and yes, I understand that I’m not being realistic above.

We had a nearly politics-free Thanksgiving. Though one of my uncles tried a not so subtle out-loud provocation that confused the concepts of “the weather today” and “the climate.”

Building a viable electoral infrastructure depends on making it socially acceptable to be a Democrat.

It’s a real cultural problem how this works. If you go out and talk to random people about your liberal ideas, you’re being political which is impolite and/or uncivil. Right-wing ideas, which I refuse to call conservative, get spread freely as “everybody knows” truisms falsehoods in conversations carried in the tone of “amirite?”

Even here in MA, I have worked primarily retail jobs for years and basically any customer, client, or patient who approaches me with a political agenda sides with the Republicans. It was everywhere early in Obama’s presidency. How he banned light bulbs which we still carry to this day. I loved responding to the folks claiming that Obama “didn’t make enough flu shots” that “he didn’t make any.”

@Kraux Pas: I have a gay friend who told me at the beginning of the first Obama term, that the country was far too racist to handle the Obama presidency. I was more upbeat. He was right and I was wrong.

My thanksgiving was pretty fun and peaceful. My dad and my brother are way more emotional about the Trump stuff than I am. They rage at the TV all the time. I found that watching 24 hour news does lead to rage. I don’t watch 24 hours because I think it’s bad for you. Reading twitter and reading activists is much more interesting. I do feel though at times I’m in a bubble but I have a hard time trusting anything conservative. I don’t even know what conservative sources are talking in good faith. But one thing for sure, if you’re conservative and support Trump you ain’t conservative, motherfucker.

I have a gay friend who told me at the beginning of the first Obama term, that the country was far too racist to handle the Obama presidency. I was more upbeat. He was right and I was wrong.

The country as whole? No. That’s why Obama won twice, convincingly, and his party consistently gets more votes. This holds true despite Republican institutional support from the media, the Russians, and occasionally the FBI.

I keep wanting some of the companies in California to realize that there are good schools in states like Iowa and move part of their operations and people to those states. It would lower their costs, the costs for their employees, and move some Democrats into those states.

@Kraux Pas: He was trying to warn me that there was far too much racism in this country than I had personally encountered myself and that O’s election would bring it out in the open. He was right about that.

Being a loud-mouthed liberal woman in a deep-red pocket of a trending blue state is certainly…interesting. I plan to get more active in the Democratic Party infrastructure in our county after the New Year. I had to drop out of attending our regular monthly meetings because of my work schedule and other conflicts. But the phenomenon is exactly the same: a lot of underground liberals who have to try to get RINOS elected (because nobody will win, much less run, as a Democrat here), who then get primaried and recalled by the hysterical Teahadi rumpist brigade.

THere are some signs of hope: the Teahadists’ attempts to take over the hospital board and mess with the School Board districting have been thwarted. Maybe it’s time for us to come up from underground.

Oh, gotta run – Watson evidently thought the TP rolls waiting to be taken upstairs were chew toys. OOPS.

“This is not to say that radicalized rural kids aren’t a problem – but the problem is bigger than that. The Senate and the Electoral College over-represent states that intelligent progressive kids want to leave. Maybe, as Deb and James Fallows have reported, some of these kids will stay and enlarge blue dots in otherwise conservative states. But why bother when you can just move a few hundred miles away and not have to deal with the narrow minds and poverty of spirit that infects rural America?”

That’s exactly what is going on. Anyone with any brains and or ambition leaves rural red states. Large portions of those rural counties have shrinking populations.
Nebraska, Iowa, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Utah, etc, have a combined population that is much less than half of that as California yet each of those state have two seantors, the same as California.

I can relate to being a liberal in a conservative area. Even though I’m in purplish San Antonio, my suburban area is pretty red. However, it is very friendly and neighborly and no one talks politics, because of fear of conflict, I believe. Put up my first yard sign ever this year (congressional candidate Joseph Kopser, who unfortunately lost). I felt like a was doing a radical act. There were a smattering of Beto signs in the neighborhood also. Once humorous observation. All yard signs were up against the houses rather than on the curb. I think people wanted to let their views known but didn’t want to be rude and in your face about it.

My thanksgiving table was three oldsters and one young (mid 20s). Everything was fine except at one point the youngster came out with something so casually and appallingly racist that it took my breath away. Then she was confused when three people her parents’ age were all like, “not cool”.

But as a society, if we want to have a functioning democracy (and maybe even avoid a second civil war), those of us who do choose to remain in red areas — people like Cole, some of you, and me — have to do the hard work of building an electoral infrastructure, as outlined in the Washington Monthly piece.

More than building an electoral infrastructure, we have to build a human infrastructure to give people a reason to stay there. I think that starts with massive investment in education, knowing that it won’t necessarily bear fruit for a generation. But establish lots of state university satellite campuses. Let them be employment centers at first until the growth of an educated cohort starts to retain and even attract people, and then be ready to spend even more money on infrastructure to give those people something to do.

My thanksgiving dinner was free of political conflict. Our totebagger friends worship at the altar of Bob Woodward and value Brooksian pearls of wisdom but they both voted straight ticket for Ds. I have gotten them to admit that NPR’s political coverage is subtly skewed against Ds. Slow progress.

You’re a better (stronger) person than I am, Betty. I would never go back to my rural John Birch-infested hometown. I’m surprised to find myself in a rural area again after years of big city living, but I made sure to settle in a purple-to-blue state. With some notable exceptions, most of my classmates who stayed in our little town are exactly those described in the article, people lacking the intellectual/emotional resources and drive to seek or embrace (relish!) a wider world. Too many have become haters. I’ve tried pursuing the chimera of “civil discourse” with them. In my experience, it’s mission impossible. They’re just too stewed in ignorance and hate-juice. Toddlers in full tantrum meltdown are more reasonable. My choice is to leave them behind. I don’t mind if they become indirect beneficiaries of good public policy, but I’m not going to reach out to them or – dawg-forbid – live within spitting distance of them. My hope is to overwhelm them at the polls, and I notice that they now have a Democratic congresscritter for the first time in (my) living memory. So maybe there’s more hope than I’ve allowed for. But I still ain’t moving back. ;)

I've been gnashing my teeth about how we in the media covered the caravan, and my new column argues that we have to ask ourselves the same tough questions we ask Facebook. Too often we've allowed Pres Trump and others to use us to manipulate voters. https://t.co/jwQk0I8mRJ— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) November 24, 2018

I have a gay friend who told me at the beginning of the first Obama term, that the country was far too racist to handle the Obama presidency. I was more upbeat. He was right and I was wrong.

The country as whole? No. That’s why Obama won twice, convincingly, and his party consistently gets more votes. This holds true despite Republican institutional support from the media, the Russians, and occasionally the FBI.

I dunno. In my most cynical and depressed moments, I wonder if Obama was only able to beat McCain and Romney because they weren’t racist enough. I mean, they were both pretty racist, but I can see how a current Trump supporter would have seen them both as squishes and simply stayed home in disgust that no one was really appealing to their sense of petty white grievance.

There are several things Democrats can do about the bias the Senate and the Electoral College have toward Republicans without a constitutional amendment when they control all three branches of government again, even with a bare majority in the Senate (The filibuster should be and probably is history!) First, Get more States! Approve Statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. which already have majorities that want it. Second, Increase the number of Congresspeople from 435 to at least 600, more would be better! As Suggested in this Washington Monthly article “To Fix Congress, Make It Bigger. Much Bigger.”

I want them (and only them) to live in their dystopian ideal of how things should be

This won’t and can’t work, because their ideas about how things should be is based around them ruling over an underclass of people not like them. Nothing you can do can dissuade them from believing that would be a great world. It actually would be really nice for them, and the damage it would do to everyone else doesn’t matter to them because they lack empathy.

One persons observation about the radicalization of the really rural areas, my mother’s side are actual dairy farmers from Wisconsin. Family farm from the 1800’s. When my mom married my dad in 1962, his family thought they looked like Amish, they were so country, and far from stores. Social life revolved around the very local school and the church. In the 1980’s, they all got access to “modern” culture when VHS video’s were rentable at the local grocery store in town. All of a sudden, my cousins started changing. Many of them left, those who stayed had to be flexible about income sources. My mothers generation also mostly left, but without as much preknowledge of how it was outside, and their changes didn’t go back home much. It also was kind of expected in that only one could get the family farm. After 1980, each time I visited, there were more signs of the city getting back to the really rural area. I think satellite TV was probably pretty revolutionary too, but VHS was pretty cheap.
My uncle may lose the farm soon. He was a successful farmer, unlike my grandfather, but his wife died of cancer recently, after a long expensive illness, which also involved my Uncle staying with her in a city hospital. They had to sell most of his herd he spent decades building up. Both sons are kind of alienated and weren’t available to help. Don’t really know the full circumstances on that. Mom’s upset about the farm and worried about her brother.
I think the radicalization may have started before facebook, or at least the seeds if it.
Also if you drive through the area, many of the homesteads are abandoned. Machinery costs mean it takes about 3 old homesteads to make a farm that is profitable, and those machines mean a farmer can take care of about 3 times as many cows. So 2 out of 3 farm families have moved on and those houses aren’t needed. Cold winters with no inhabitants to maintain it, destroy those houses in a few years. The land is still farmed, but with fewer people. Everybody has cars and can get into town.

@Schlemazel: If you haven’t already, sign up for the Mayo online portal access. We did that for my wife as Mayo JAX is over 2 hours away. The last thing we do before leaving for an appointment is check online and print out the itinerary. Since her transplant, we don’t have to go as often but we still make sure they haven’t changed the appointment (as they have done to us in the past) before hitching up the horses.

@mark: Anyone? I get really tired of this sort of smugness and superiority. Bigotry is bigotry, and that attitude doesn’t help anyone. Some of us choose to live in the country and wouldn’t trade it for the city.

Reducing the size of the 21-member Senate Judiciary Committee is reportedly among the actions being considered by Senate Republicans as they prepare for the next Congress.

If that happens, Sen. Kamala Harris of California — a high-profile Democrat who is considered a possible candidate for her party’s 2020 presidential nomination — could be left off the panel, according to a report.

That’s because the first-term senator is the judiciary committee’s most junior member, and would be among the first to go if the panel is downsized, the Washington Post reported.

Athens is a gerrymandered oasis in a sea of red but the ATL is only 65 miles away and even the burbs are trending our way. I have plenty of RWNJ friends (mostly Nam Vets) and I call them Nozi’s and they call me a “Peace Queer”.

The number of people in America who think every Spanish-speaker is “An Illegal” and/or “A Mexican” is massive. They don’t know the difference and don’t care to know it.

But they weren’t in the country yet. They still aren’t. Also, I would argue that Trump’s resistance to our legal immigration procedures is a bigger affront to the law than unauthorized border crossings.

@Raven: This is happening in a lot of growing area, even in southern red states. The city grows out and turns blue. It’s a lot of what happened in Texas over the last two elections. Harris county (Houston) turned blue in 2016. The Dallas suburbs went blue this year. Austin has always been blue but there are now references to the “blue spine of Texas,” which is the I-35 corridor from San Antonio to Austin. Those cities have been growing toward each other and as that happens that area has become bluer.

Oh, they’ve been escalating their Cold Civil War against the US for years. What do you think all the government shutdowns were? They thought they had the legitimacy to dictate all national policy while only controlling one half of one branch of the government or else they would interfere in the normal operation of the government. While they cut taxes for the elite, they expect blue state average tax payers to bail them out for the ineptitude of their own local government.

About 20 years ago, I thought maybe the internet would cure rural blight by bringing greater access to knowledge, increasing interaction between cultures, and opening up new opportunities via telecommuting. None of that seems to have panned out so far, or at least not in a sufficiently widespread way.

As an out and proud Libtard living deep in the heart of trumpistan I am of mixed feelings and experiences. Yes my political leanings are loudly proclaimed on my truck. And over the years I have been approached by a number of liberals who quietly agree with me and want me to know how “brave” they think I am, but in my 16 years out here, the closest to a confrontation I have had was a drive by hate honk complete with spittle flecked screaming and a waving one fingered salute.

I often find myself biting my tongue when I overhear some particularly egregious RWNJ bullshit because I am just too tired to interact with such idiots. Every now and again I’ll speak up tho and they nearly always shut up in embarrassed silence, as tho they know it’s all BS but it’s an us/them marker that they feel the need to propagate. The few times they don’t I am more than ready to keep pushing back and they surrender with a, “We’ll just have to agree to disagree.” Yup.

When Obama was running I volunteered and found myself almost exclusively canvassing in Steelville (and yes I was alone) when nobody else was willing to go there. I had doors slammed in my face and had a few “discussions” that were borderline “passionate”, but I also had a number of fruitful discussions with people whose minds I doubt were changed but I felt they were at least thinking about what I said. I never once felt threatened by anybody even if their loathing of me was written in capitol letters on the faces.

At the same point, I don’t advertise it on the 2 lane hwy that passes our property. Plain and simply because I can not bear the thought that my wife might be subjected to some abuse for my willingness to be so out there. It’s different for a woman, I know this even if I can’t quite truly understand it. I can quite easily see my wife getting the mail out of our box and some entitled misogynistic redneck feeling he has the right to wave his piece at my wife to put her “in her place”.

And so I don’t write to the local weekly rag, eviscerating the latest lies perpetrated by Jason Smith on their uncritical pages. Because my name would be attached. And if my name is attached my place can be found and some whacko may think he needs to make a point, maybe by poisoning my dogs, or blowing up my mail box, or threatening my wife. The possibility of that terrifies me.

We went to a friend’s house for Thanksgiving. 14 liberals and 1 Texas Republican at the table. It really put a damper on conversation, in my view, given that being “civil” apparently means a lot of self-censorship to accommodate the outlier. The food was good, but I’m not sure it made the experience of not being entirely oneself worth it.

@O. Felix Culpa: Why is it that Ds and liberals always have to be accommodating and respectful. Not once have I seen MSM lecturing T to be bipartisan. I mean he didn’t even win a majority of the votes but is ruling like it were a mandate.Obama on the other hand got elebenty such lectures.

The cons use our willingness to accommodate against us. There is no reciprocity on their part, in arenas public and private

thankfully no political arguments at thanksgiving. i was dreading the possibility but the aunt who would’ve been the issue couldn’t get a reasonably-priced flight, thankfully.

speaking of fox news feeding people shit, whatever algorithm twitter is using is feeding people shit and filtering out a lot of people i follow. i was reminded of accessing twitter via realtwitter.com, which, if you already logged into twitter, applies a filter that shows you tweets chronologically, rather than according to twitter’s algorithm. i did it this morning and instantly saw tweets from a bunch of people i hadn’t seen tweets from in ages.

About 20 years ago, I thought maybe the internet would cure rural blight by bringing greater access to knowledge, increasing interaction between cultures, and opening up new opportunities via telecommuting.

As part of the stimulus the local electric coop was given a bunch of money to put in pipe for fiber optic cable. My wife was super excited when I informed her of it. Today that 20 or 30 mile loop of pipe lies empty still because 2010 happened and Jason Smith and the whole GOP decided to shit on their voters.

This is one of my big peeves about Barack Obama. He was a great president, but he built an amazing political organization that also had the advantage of coming right when Howard Dean was wrapping up his 50 state thing. Right after 2008 was the time to solidify what gains we’d made–even more so in places like the ones you speak of. And then Obama just kind of forgot about it, turned his attention to other things and then let the whole organization wither on the vine.

I understand that he had a lot to deal with. I get that. I also understand that he always like governing better than campaigning. I get that, too. But you don’t get to effectively govern if you don’t win the seats, as he found out two years into his term. The last six years were effectively holding on to what had come in the first two. And not that that wasn’t something we needed to do, but the loss of the House meant that we couldn’t make any more headway. And I believe that letting his political organization wither may have kelp us from maybe taking back the House later in his term. We just kind of gave up on a lot of places like the ones you speak of, places where we’d made a lot of gains only a few years earlier.

I got a funny feeling only a month after Obama’s election. I don’t know how many of you remember this, but there was a Senate runoff in Georgia about a month after the general election. A Democrat had held Saxby Chambliss to below 50%. And Obama did nothing in that runoff. The story I heard was that he didn’t want to blow any of his political capital on a race we might have gone on to lose anyway. And of course, Jim Martin lost. There’s no way to know if he might have pulled off a win with Obama’s help; but it couldn’t have hurt.

We need to run everywhere. Everywhere. Even in Oklahoma, in Alabama, in Wyoming, in Idaho, in all these places we think we have no shot. It’s true, we’ll lose most of those races. But we’re going to surprise ourselves once in a while, and in the meantime, we can make ourselves better known to the people living there. We can make our case. We can only help ourselves by fighting everywhere. And there are people in these districts and states who need us. I think we owe it to them to try to help them as they work to get better representation for themselves.

Why is it that Ds and liberals always have to be accommodating and respectful.

Good question. I imagine it’s what we’ve observed time and time again on this insightful, nearly top 10,000 blog: the system is inherently tilted towards the right and against the left. In this specific case, we honored the request of our hosts. The R was an unexpected guest and they didn’t want a fractious Thanksgiving, which I understand. But in principle you are correct.

Why is it that Ds and liberals always have to be accommodating and respectful. Not once have I seen MSM lecturing T to be bipartisan.

It would be just one more example of purported liberal media bias. You know, fairy tales.

I mean he didn’t even win a majority of the votes but is ruling like it were a mandate.

Meanwhile Obama; who ran explicitly on bipartisanship, achieved a legitimate electoral mandate twice, and bent over backwards to address Republican concerns; was lectured in the media how he wasn’t doing enough. He should socialize with them more, show up to some beltway establishment cocktail parties I guess. Sigh.

After 22+ years of living in a county that was either the reddest or second reddest in the state, I’m glad I’m gone.

Per satby above:

People like me are outsiders no matter how long we live in rural areas. And though I was on friendly terms with a lot of my neighbors, a lot of them really are hateful people who were only decent to me because I was white and was decent first.

That encapsulated perfectly the two decades experience of living in red, rurl Misery. And yes, everybody knew everybody’s politics, you just didn’t talk about them. The closest I came was when I wrote a letter to the country paper about a proposed railroad quiet zone (I wanted it). Several weeks later in the bar down along the river, one of my neighbors got on my case as an “outsider” and we damn near came to blows. That experience told me everything I needed to know about my Trump-loving, ignorant, cracker, bigoted neighbors.

They’ve lived down to my expectations time and time again over the subsequent years.

@cope:
Did that. Today’s appointment was on there last time I checked along with 12/4. I assumed those were additional tests as there were more of them an none were labeled. I didn’t see a reason to check last week because, again assuming, they would actively inform me of any changes

Oh, and the “office of patient experience” currently has a sign saying they stepped away and will be back at 9. It is now 9:24

@schrodingers_cat: And I wonder what would happen if we all collectively decided we just weren’t putting up with conservatives’ shit anymore and just called them on it whenever they decided to spew it, and refused to allow meepings of “civility!” to stop us from calling them on it.

I’m not like Nancy SMASH – I don’t actually relish the conflict. But I’ve decided that I’m not going to shrink from it any more either.

I mean, they were both pretty racist, but I can see how a current Trump supporter would have seen them both as squishes and simply stayed home in disgust that no one was really appealing to their sense of petty white grievance.

In moments like that, it’s good to remember that Hillary won the popular vote by a large margin, and Trump only won the electoral college with very close (and suspicious) wins in a handful of critical states. Even with an out and out racist on the ticket and serious attempts at ratfucking and voter suppression, the Republicans couldn’t come close to a majority.

@schrodingers_cat: My step daughter married into a very conservative and religious family. We don’t talk politics, it’s a no go zone because they don’t want to get me started. That’s OK, they are otherwise pleasant people whose company I can enjoy. It always kind of gripes my tho when her FIL is always invited to give the blessing of the meal. I’m not sure if it’s because they think that as an atheist I have no opinion on the matter or if it’s because they are afraid of what my opinion might be. :-)

Go back and re-read the stories that were published after the 2010 midterms. You may be astounded to realize that you’re remembering the events incorrectly and it was Congressional Democrats who asked Obama NOT to campaign with them because their voters were angry about PPACA.

You should also include the keywords “medicare” and “rove” when you google about the 2010 midterms. Again, I have a feeling you will be astounded at the huge under-the-radar campaign that was run to convince old people that only the Republicans would protect Medicare.

That was the first election where dark money flooded into Republican campaigns on the state and local level, and it showed. Sadly, far too many Democrats didn’t bother to follow the actual news and bought into the right wing’s propaganda (also purchased with dark money) both before and after the 2010 midterms.

@OzarkHillbilly:
I wrote a critical letter to the editor page of our local paper a few years ago. It was my reaction to some political storm and I made my feelings known civilly and politely.

I got a letter in the mail soon after, from some guy who has written letters to the editor himself often, and is a real nutjob. He wrote twice, rambling diatribes about how dangerous the Democrats are and other angry rhetoric. It scared me, because he took the time and trouble to track me down and send hate mail. He knows my address. It made me uneasy for a long time, but I’ve never heard from him again. But I understand your reluctance to become more visiable.

I mean, they were both pretty racist, but I can see how a current Trump supporter would have seen them both as squishes and simply stayed home in disgust that no one was really appealing to their sense of petty white grievance.

Well, that’s probably true in some cases, but not with the electorate in aggregate. Romney got about 2 million more votes than Trump did.

@A Ghost To Most: IIRC greed beca e super ‘in’ and a massive good with Reagan. I remember articles about how ‘everything,esp tone’ changed with 80 election. Articles about how different the 70s had been.

I know what you mean. I was in boot camp when the Nat Guard murdered and maimed students at Kent State who were mostly just walking between classes. Most of my fellow boots wanted to go kill them some peace-nic commies… really. I was rarely so upset with my future shipmates.

And most of them were in the Navy to avoid being in the Army in the Nam. . . so strange. When I was a youngster most everyone was a Democrat around here, and now just as many are Trumpist Republicans who spit on Democrats figuratively, as long as there are no Democrats around to call them rude. It is a puzzle…

@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I’ll never be a local and that’s just fine with me. They leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone. I get along just fine with my one neighbor, and with the landowner on the other side of us, while he and I have nothing in common but our land, on that we are perfectly aligned.

Ugh. If you didn’t have a chance to have a little talk with the Office of Patient Experience (ahem) before you had to leave, write them a paper letter when you get home and send a copy to the director of the clinic (you should be able to easily find that person’s name online). Especially today, people take paper letters sent with a stamp much, much more seriously than a fax or a phone call, and sending a copy to the clinic’s director at the same time lets that office know that they won’t be able to just bullshit you with no consequences, because the director’s office will be calling them, too.

My Republican sister-in-law and I talked politics over Thanksgiving and she’s… wavering. It’s one of those cases where when she articulates her positions, they’re all in line with the Democratic Party platform, but she’s identified so long as a Republican I think it’s akin to changing religion for her, even if she doesn’t really want to attend the GOP services any longer. She didn’t vote for Trump; she voted for what’s-his-face, which, not helpful, but also, good to know there was a line she couldn’t cross. And the GOP tax cut made her really angry because, as a small business owner, she’s getting hit very hard. So, I’m cautiously hopeful.

Currently I’m reading “The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” by Masha Gessen, and it’s making me think about how much 20 years of FOX News and conservative radio has shaped American culture and how some of these folk, especially the ones that grew up on a diet of FOX, may not be reachable. They just don’t have the frame of reference to do anything else other than root for their team. I think it’d be just dandy if we started referring to FOX News viewers as addicts, because I think they are hooked on the resentment rush they get every day. I was that way when I first found Keith Olbermann’s show, but I had to stop watching because I realized the constant hit of anger and derision I got from him was turning me into someone I didn’t like. And he wasn’t spouting racism.

@Belafon: Why would Californians want to live in Iowa? Their kids would have to go to schools which teach abstinence education and deny science. Many Californians are immigrants, children of immigrants, or spouses of immigrants. Other Californians have same sex partners. Sure property is cheaper, but you pay for that in other ways. Also, we don’t do weather, it’s exhausting and there’s no beach.

It actually would be really nice for them, and the damage it would do to everyone else doesn’t matter to them because they lack empathy.

No, it wouldn’t be nice for them because they rely on government benefits of all kinds even though they vote for the people who come to cut them. They are the moochers sucking at the government teat that they accuse POC and undocumented immigrants of being. They’re continually shocked when their own benefits are endangered because they think they’re deserving and should get all the government largess. But the megarich want all social services and benefits cut, and red state voters just refuse to believe their white skin won’t protect them.

Also, I would argue that Trump’s resistance to our legal immigration procedures is a bigger affront to the law than unauthorized border crossings.

This. Trump is blatantly ignoring the law in dealing with asylum seekers, and it’s only the most obvious way he’s illegally blocking immigration. The most recent Trump administration lawlessness I’ve read about is what’s happening in Guam. USCIS has been blanket denying all H2B visa applications and has been successfully sued by businesses filing them. They’ve continued to deny the visas, now claiming there’s no blanket denial even though they have approved exactly 0 of more than 700 applications.

I dunno. In my most cynical and depressed moments, I wonder if Obama was only able to beat McCain and Romney because they weren’t racist enough. I mean, they were both pretty racist, but I can see how a current Trump supporter would have seen them both as squishes and simply stayed home in disgust that no one was really appealing to their sense of petty white grievance.

No, I don’t think so.

I keep on trying to remind folks that those denied the franchise in those key states, was 2-3 times the margin of Dolt45’s ‘ victory’.

I dunno. In my most cynical and depressed moments, I wonder if Obama was only able to beat McCain and Romney because they weren’t racist enough. I mean, they were both pretty racist, but I can see how a current Trump supporter would have seen them both as squishes and simply stayed home in disgust that no one was really appealing to their sense of petty white grievance.

I will also admit that I completely underestimated the misogyny in 2016. I didn’t understand the depth of it.
Won’t make that problem again. Period.

Tulsa is aiming to attract people by offering those who work remotely and entrepreneurs $10,000 to move there. If they agree to stay for at least one year, the workers will receive cash that includes rent subsidies and stipends.

The reader commenters are brutal. Real downsides to moving there. Change the culture, and you might change the tax base willing to move there.

I keep wanting some of the companies in California to realize that there are good schools in states like Iowa and move part of their operations and people to those states. It would lower their costs, the costs for their employees, and move some Democrats into those states.

@Belafon: They could move their operations, but I doubt they could move their people. Very few Californians would move to Iowa voluntarily. I certainly wouldn’t. There’s been talk of my employer relocating the HQ to South Carolina. I told them right up front that while it’s a nice place to visit, there is no way in hell I would relocate there, and if they choose to do so they can find a new CTO.

I like my job, and my employer, and my position and salary, but not enough to leave this state.

They are the moochers sucking at the government teat that they accuse POC and undocumented immigrants of being. They’re continually shocked when their own benefits are endangered because they think they’re deserving and should get all the government largess. But the megarich want all social services and benefits cut, and red state voters just refuse to believe their white skin won’t protect them.

Oh, truth. I cut one of those (on permanent disability), and her Post Office retiree parents, this year. I just couldn’t take the racism and religious and sexual and gender bigotry anymore. I don’t begrudge them their safety net; I begrudge them their absolute lack of any kind of self-awareness and their utter embracing of their own assholeness.

@Butch: What did he say that was wrong? Young ambitious people have been leaving rural areas for decades. My ancestors fled the midwest (SD, IA) for CA in the 30s and the old home towns are barely hanging on. That process has not stopped and large swathes of the rural midwest have about as many ghost towns as live towns now. You can like rural life, many people do, but it’s hard to keep the majority down on the farm.

@lurker dean:
You can get a chronological timeline from classic Twitter. You just have to go into your account settings and disable “Show the best tweets first”. That’s slightly different from “realtwitter.com” because it includes replies and retweets, which are shown according to the time when they were retweeted by a person you’re following, not based on when they were originally tweeted.

USCIS has been blanket denying all H2B visa applications and has been successfully sued by businesses filing them. They’ve continued to deny the visas, now claiming there’s no blanket denial even though they have approved exactly 0 of more than 700 applications.

We really do need a protocol for upper level government officials who refuse to uphold the law. See also LePage re: Medicaid expansion.

@mark: Until late 70s
IA was pretty liberal. Harkin won House seat in 74. There were good dem governors. Religious Right takeover of national GOP badly affected IA GOP. My nestdoor neighbor was precint chair for GOP and clearly didn’t know how to deal with new reality. I believe the change really hit IA with the massive national effort to stop the ERA. It was led in our college town by women in the local Mormon church. Part of the antiERA campaign was a massive ramping up of homophobia.

Friends who defended the ERA in talks in nearby counties would come back telling how women there would talk about the dangers of ‘secular humanism’! What are they talki g about?? my friends would moan.

The antiERA campaign was a major national RW campaign to ‘take back America.’ In other words, it was an early, extremely successful move to undo gains made by women (amd minorities) in the 60s.

Because my name would be attached. And if my name is attached my place can be found and some whacko may think he needs to make a point, maybe by poisoning my dogs, or blowing up my mail box, or threatening my wife. The possibility of that terrifies me.

I had to think about that too. Country people find it odd that, for me, living in a rural area was more scary than living in Chicago, because of my neighbors: armed, entitled, and primed to hate. I canvassed for Obama and put out a sign and caught a certain amount of grief that occasionally have me slight pause. But I also lived alone and so no one else was ever affected by my political activity. And by the time I hosted my hijab wearing exchange daughters, enough people liked me that I didn’t worry too much.
But to be safe, I enrolled them in a school in St.Joe, not my local one.

@Achrachno: He said “anyone” with brains and ambition leaves, which implies that everyone who stays is a slack-jawed moron. Obviously that’s insulting and untrue. I didn’t take offense since I figured he was generalizing and didn’t mean to offend, but can’t you understand how someone could find such a broad-brush statement irritating?

Why would Californians want to live in Iowa? Their kids would have to go to schools which teach abstinence education and deny science. Many Californians are immigrants, children of immigrants, or spouses of immigrants. Other Californians have same sex partners. Sure property is cheaper, but you pay for that in other ways. Also, we don’t do weather, it’s exhausting and there’s no beach.

@Juice Box: I never think of this because I don’t have kids, but damn, the school system – yeah, I wouldn’t put any hypothetical children of mine into an Iowa public school for a week, never mind years.

A few years back, I was in Ohio this time of year. 19 degrees. Ice on everything. It’s going to be 75 here today, it’s a cloudless blue sky with the sun shining on the palms and eucalyptus outside my office window. Why the fuck would I ever leave this?

They’re continually shocked when their own benefits are endangered because they think they’re deserving and should get all the government largess. But the megarich want all social services and benefits cut, and red state voters just refuse to believe their white skin won’t protect them.

THIS THIS THIS

A thousand times, this.

I don’t remember his name, but he wrote an article at the Atlantic, after the 2016 election…

His premise was…
White people don’t mind SOCIALISM…

as long as it’s WHITE SOCIALISM…..

The problem that they have with Democratic Party principles is that the Democratic Party wants to apply them to EVERYONE.

And, ICAM.

They were against Obamacare because, and I will truly believe this…
It was the first expansion of the American Social Safety Net that DID NOT – in its DESIGN – exclude huge swaths of the American Populace (unlike Social Security and Medicare).

@Betty Cracker: That was insensitive but many T voters and Rs in general want to be loved and praised for their general meanness, stupidity and ignorance. They can say the nastiest thing about immigrants but I am not supposed to take offense because they have designated me as acceptable (for now). That was the attitude of my ex friend. Who was hurt when I cut her out of my life after she supported the travel ban.

@The Moar You Know: South Carolina and Georgia will be blue before a lot of other states. The problem is that the outsiders trickle in and it takes at least a generation to change the political cast of the state because existing power structures start slanting the rules to maximize their hold on power. Virginia and North Carolina are the parallels, but the backlash has been fierce, leading Republicans to engage in voter suppression and gerrymandering that will be undone only very slowly. The same urban/rural divides are emerging within these states that exist in the country as a whole.

The existence of this group does more than tell us about 136 women in a small county in Texas. Their experience of fear and intimidation challenges assumptions about democracy in the United States.

There are a lot of reasons that people are reticent about speaking out about their politics.

I remember that after Obama won, and some staff were openly pleased, some right wingers in an office I worked in here in Southern California became more taciturn, and sometimes refused to talk about politics at all with the larger group, but huddled with others who were like minded. I also recall being surprised that some people who I thought had brains, even if conservative, began spouting Fox News talking points. And at another time, a young woman who lived in Orange County actually admitted that she viewed where she lived as a fortress, which had to keep out the lazy welfare-driven blacks and Mexicans who wanted to take all that she had worked so hard for. These people were pumped for the descent of Trump.

But obviously, feeling like a lonely political person besieged by a larger, unsympathetic group, is not limited to blue state souls living in red states.

Also, when I visited relatives in Texas pre-Thanksgiving, everyone was pretty much on the same page politically, liberal to radical.

The only forbidden subject was religion. No problem in my immediate family, but I never talk about being a non-believer with my sister’s in-laws. They would not be hostile, but cannot imagine that any person would not want to be wrapped in the loving arms of Baby Jesus.

@satby:
Their fight against government spending is only because they’re forced to share. Their ideal world would involve reversing Brown v. Board of Education and similar cases, or more likely just repealing the 13th through 15th Amendments on which those cases were built. That would let them build their ideal world of Whites Only socialism on the backs of poor minorities.

I’m retiring and moving back to my blue-purple hometown in Iowa.
I know exactly what I’m getting into, and who the haters are, and how to live there anyway.
Even on the edge of Steve King country, the regional medical center and community college give decency enough of an electoral edge that liberalism keeps the haters mostly at bay.

As nearly as I can tell, Republicanism in my town (having culminated in the grand hate orgasm of Trumpism and support for the ever-more-offensive Steve King) is waning as people learn what was behind the mask of supposed conservative principle, and are sickened by what they find.

Until the 2016 cycle, Iowa Democrats have suffered from a lack of strong candidates, and that continued with Hubbell. I think that the wave of engaged women who became activists over the last three years will provide the deep bench that solves that problem going forward.

That was insensitive but many T voters and Rs in general want to be loved and praised for their general meanness, stupidity and ignorance.

Ha! That reminds me of an anecdote about the friend I mentioned above that I cut off ties with this year. Last year she wrote to me, complaining about her only gay friend (a former co-worker, friend of over ten years) who unfriended her on Facebook after she posted a homophobic comment and then, when he confronted her on it, doubled down. She was really, really upset he cut her off. I tried to be sympathetic, but I absolutely howled when she, in all her misery, wrote me that his final post to her on FB was an image of a drag queen, saying, “Not today, Satan.”

And I totally envied him, then, for having the gonads to ditch her. Well, I caught up to him this year.

@Brachiator: My in-laws, especially MIL is far more religious than I am. I usually don’t argue about religion with her but do stand my ground if she expects me perform certain rituals, since she can’t do them anymore after her husband passed away.
In the orthodox formulation of Hinduism, widows are less than. I have encouraged her to continue doing those herself but she does not agree with my POV on this.

I keep wanting some of the companies in California to realize that there are good schools in states like Iowa and move part of their operations and people to those states. It would lower their costs, the costs for their employees, and move some Democrats into those states.

Every January, people watch the Rose Bowl parade, see the sunshine and pleasing temperatures and diversity, and thousands think, “man, we should move to California!”

I just don’t see more than a handful of people thinking, “yeah, let’s move to Iowa.”

Actually, Iowa and some parts of Ohio, maybe the Columbus area, are good and are attracting people and businesses. But it’s still a tough sell for many. California just has too much to offer, not just in jobs, but in quality of life matters.

I currently live in a deep Blue state (MD) but will be moving to Nebraska in time for the 2020 general election to be close to family…and the fact that it’s considerably cheaper to live there for a retired person. At least I’m moving to Omaha and not rural Nebraska…and, since Nebraska apportions it’s electoral votes by Congressional District, there’s a chance that district might go Blue.

My in-laws, especially MIL is far more religious than I am. I usually don’t argue about religion with her but do stand my ground if she expects me perform certain rituals, since she can’t do them anymore after her husband passed away.
In the orthodox formulation of Hinduism, widows are less than. I have encouraged her to continue doing those herself but she does not agree with my POV on this.

At best, I acknowledge stuff like this, but cannot participate or indulge it. And I might not say this to someone in a similar circumstance, but I find any religion cruel that causes sadness or puts a barrier between the divine and a believer because of gender.

Some of my sister’s in-laws believe the version of Christianity that believes that the man should be the head of the household. I think my sister’s husband believed this when they first got married, but she cured him of this silliness.

Maybe trivial, but related. Eons ago, I had a girlfriend whose brand of Christianity insisted that women should not dance or wear jewelry. She loved to dance and wear jewelry, and felt great guilt that she was “failing” her religion. I sympathized with her, but could only watch her feel tortured over her supposed lack of true faith.

We really do need a protocol for upper level government officials who refuse to uphold the law. See also LePage re: Medicaid expansion.

Jail time for contempt seems like a reasonable recourse. In the case of LePage, I think elections would have caught up to him pretty quickly. It’s no coincidence that Maine voters elected a Democratic governor and big Democratic majorities in both houses of the state legislature.

I keep on trying to remind folks that those denied the franchise in those key states, was 2-3 times the margin of Dolt45’s ‘ victory’.

Yep. Beto came very, very close to unseating Ted Cruz in a state where, if a clerk misspelled your name on your birth certificate when you were born, the state authorities demand that you spend $250 to legally change your name to the correct spelling before you’re allowed to vote.

@Elizabelle: Tulsa and OKC are better than the rest of the state. The
Tulsa mayor seems fairly reasonable. (He’s a friend of my nephew and family. Not sure of nephew, but brother is super, major, unabashed RW.)

Actually, Iowa and some parts of Ohio, maybe the Columbus area, are good and are attracting people and businesses. But it’s still a tough sell for many. California just has too much to offer, not just in jobs, but in quality of life matters.

Well, California does provide the occasional preview of climate change driven Armageddon. Of course it’s a coin flip as to whether anthropogenic enhanced fires, mud slides and drought get you before geology does.

@Betty Cracker: People need to be willing to seek out those alternatives in order to experience and possibly grow from them. Instead, the proliferation of ideologically slanted outlets, of all stripes has made epistemic closure that more alluring.

@Just One More Canuck: A couple years ago I had a front wheel bearing start to talk when I was 6 miles or so out of town. By the time I got to town it was literally screaming and I wondered if I’d make to the shop. Could feel it clunking as I turned into the lot. I went in an told them what was up. T went out and took one look at it and said, “Yep, it’s gone.” Most of the mechanics were gone for the day and my wife was in Spain. When I explained my situation I was hoping for a ride home. Next thing I knew the truck was in a bay and on a lift as T and H (another front desk guy) went to work on it. One hour later I drove home and they each had an extra $20 in their pocket to buy lunch with.

many T voters and Rs in general want to be loved and praised for their general meanness, stupidity and ignorance.

As I have said many times, assholes demand to be praised for being assholes. It’s one of the reasons they’re assholes. Evangelicals are a fine example, crowing about how righteous they are hurting other people, and treating anyone disagreeing with them as oppression. Look also at the Kavanaugh hearings, and how the whole Republican Party were infuriated that Democrats would dare object just because Kavanaugh is a rapist.

I gave my cousin’s husband wide berth but did hear him from another room complaining that Medicare costs too much “because of Obamacare.” (He didn’t start on Medicare until after the ACA so I don’t know what his basis of comparison is, but no matter.)

Of course I completely agree with him that all medical coverage in this country of ours costs too much.

I was tempted to go into the sun room to tell him so, and to point out the solution is obviously some sort of single payer but I really don’t respect him and bough to give him that much attention.

@The Moar You Know: Son graduated IA public school in a college town in 86. Kids from that school went on to Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc, etc, etc. I realize a great deal has changed in IA–and NATIONALLY –since then.

Note on how things have changed in last 50 yrs. When I graduated HS in Tulsa in 1957, 2 of the high schools in Tulsa were on the list of the best (maybe top 10? It was a looong time ago!)high schools in the country. Kids from our class went to Rice, Hatvatd, Yale, etc, etc.

@OzarkHillbilly: We’re in area that went 70/30 trump. All county commissioners are R’s. Our home overlooks a popular county park across the river. I thought our deck railing would be a great place for some political signs. My wife is very liberal but is unequivocally against it and she’s right.

…20 years of FOX News and conservative radio has shaped American culture and how some of these folk, especially the ones that grew up on a diet of FOX, may not be reachable. They just don’t have the frame of reference to do anything else other than root for their team. I think it’d be just dandy if we started referring to FOX News viewers as addicts, because I think they are hooked on the resentment rush they get every day.

Amen to all of this. They’re goners.

Only thing we can do is try to get the big money/dark money out, campaign everywhere, campaign on voting rights/access, and hope that we keep our majorities together long enough to outlast them. The core FOX audience is just gone, cognitively speaking.

@Frankensteinbeck: Overt gerrymandering could get undone only every 10 years depending on who happens to be in office when redistricting occurs. Even last year, in Virginia, the House of Delegates still retained Republican control specifically because of gerrymandering, and probably a little because of voter ID laws. This in a state that has not elected a Republican to a statewide state office since 2009, but that election meant that 2010 redistricting was incredibly favorable to Republicans. So maybe in 2022 there will be a sizable Democratic majority in the HOD and senate — 18 years after the last Republican won a statewide federal election (George Bush’s second term in 2004). That’s what I’m talking about.

@Betty Cracker:
We have that problem here every time we talk about how shitty Texas, Florida ect are. Yeah it is stereotyping and it is unfair but there is a germ of truth because a significant majority are mouth breathing knuckle dragging morons and they are presenting the state as such. I don’t know how to talk about those places without #notallIowans or similar
#notallmen
#notallwhitepeople

I rather suspect that is absolutely the truth. Providing more medical care to more people costs more money. Who’da thunk it? Of course, what is left unsaid is the amount of money saved by capturing illnesses earlier and the increased productivity of people who aren’t ill.

Just called my federal representatives (all Dems) to ask them to oppose and investigate the teargassing of asylum-seekers on the Mexican side of the border. There’s legally established process for evaluating asylum claims and teargassing is not it. I’m more of a law-and-order person – in the sense of actually wanting rule of law and due process – than I realized.

@OzarkHillbilly: Rolling hills beat the pool table of Illinois, I’ll give you that. Three and a half years of being 10 hours from anywhere was enough for me. My step-brother said Minot AFB was Omaha x 10.
At least Omaha is a nice place.

@joel hanes: Good for you. My ex and son in center of IA and were pitched into King’s district when IA House Reps went to 4. When we moved to IA in 68, IA was quite liberal. It was a change from grad school in CA but then where wouldn’t have been then?!?! It was still a very far cry from OK, where I grew up in tne 40s and 50s!

@CliosFanBoy: I once had the “If you can’t trust me with choice how can you trust me with a child” bumpersticker taken off my car in the parking garage at Dulles. Granted, it was about 10 years ago, but I’m always kind of surprised my D bumperstickers are still there when I return from a trip.

@Roger Moore: i do have it unchecked, but noticed i haven’t seen certain tweeters for weeks. but then i saw them on realtwitter, or by applying the filter: filter:follows -filter:replies. i think there may be another algorithm even when you uncheck.

@The Moar You Know:
One of the things that drove us out of Florida was how awful Brevard schools were. I told the story here before of my son in the advanced algebra class at Titusville High. 40 kids in the class 20 were learning and 20 the teacher allowed to sit in a corner and play cards ad joke during class.

Still can’t believe the day I am going to a federal prison camp, mainstream media says am going for my Russia contacts. I have never met a single Russian official in my life. I have, however, met many western intel sources—Joseph Mifsud—who people still call “Russian.” Facts. USA

The wife and I chose to spend Thanksgiving with friends and eating out at a Korean buffet. There was no clean up on our part, and what we paid was about what we would have spent on making a traditional meal. Afterwards, we spent the night playing party games on Jackbox Games 5, which I recommend to everyone.

The California Diaspora is a thing, but… I dabble with interstate migration statistics and a good-sized majority of the out-migration from California stays in the contiguous western states. Interstate migration in the West is overwhelmingly between the major metropolitan areas. Necessarily so — by population the West is, using Census Bureau definitions, the least-rural of the CB’s four regions. The Diaspora is a factor in the ongoing “bluing” of the West. Not the only factor, but there’s an effect.

I agree with this. Further, I find the tendency of some commenters to make broad assumptions about others based on age brackets or places they choose to live, among other things, to be disturbing. It is so easy to paint with a broad brush and feel superior to others when we know nothing about their feelings and/or lives.

This is an old one that started setting me off during the when they started saying the climate scientists were in it for the money. Really got me fired up since the Obamacare debate. No DAMMIT, the democrats are try to do good reasonable things!!

@Roger Moore:
St, Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman quit when he discovered the real game. He wrote a book about it that has been widely ignored. He was a true believer in the supply-side bullshit but he quickly discovered he was alone. The inner circle, the boys pushing the agenda had one goal, to bankrupt the Federal government and cripple it so it could no longer do anything other than fund DoD.

I didn’t intend to discuss politics with my family but ended up doing so anyway. One sister who voted for BS in the primary and Hillary in the general started everything off by mentioning that Hillary was running again for president. I quickly told her that she wasn’t and nobody had anything to worry about in that regard. This started the rant by my nephew stating how horrible Hillary and the Democrats were and criticizing Pelosi. This really upset me because my sister believed something completed fabricated and my nephew seemed to hate Democrats and blame them more than Republicans. Like hey, all you old lady Democrats the whole thing is your fault.
I confront one of my two conservative sisters on a case by case basis. She didn’t vote for Trump or anyone for president but believes good can come out of the situation. Children are in cages and now being gassed, this is an atrocity. She said the ACA wasn’t working because young people didn’t buy in. I said it wasn’t perfect but it helped millions of people and the Republicans sabotaged it.

About 20 years ago, I thought maybe the internet would cure rural blight by bringing greater access to knowledge, increasing interaction between cultures, and opening up new opportunities via telecommuting. None of that seems to have panned out so far, or at least not in a sufficiently widespread way.

There are still tech utopians who believe that the Internets can sprout virtual communities with libertarian or progressive values.

Some of this has happened. And it is interesting to see how tech savvy farmers, for example, use the Internet to help become even more productive in the modern age.

But here’s the irony. The Internet, and the easy dissemination of facts, has been the greatest threat to the ignorant in the history of mankind. Problem is, the ignorant decided to fight back. Some people desperately want to cling to “The Truth” as they know it or as was passed down to them. And so they look for media and web sites which reinforce what they want to be true. Or they create outposts of ignorance to protect themselves from the onslaught of undesirable information. And this is a universal problem, not just an American one.

The other unexpected consequence is that the Internet lets the stupid, the hateful and the bigoted find like-minded fools at the speed of light, greatly magnifying the ability of idiots to find aid and comfort.

@Brachiator: The Red parts of Blue Oregon are plenty shitty. Mostly rural but Roseburg is a big town for the area and overrun with wackos. Only a few days after the community college mass shooting the sheriff started ranting in press conferences about protecting the 2nd amendment. Locals love him.

@Brachiator: Second Civil War? We’re in the late stages of the First Civil War! The North won the armed conflict. But the South waited out reconstruction and re-imposed Jim Crow. There are a lot of people still waving Confederate Flags. My nephew, who has lived his entire life in a Union state, referred to it as The War of Northern Aggression and sports a huge Confederate flag belt buckle to go with his Duck Dynasty beard. Sherman had the right idea.

@Belafon: In the early eighties, HP moved a printer factory to Spokane, Washington. Relocating employees had so much cash from selling Silicon valley homes that they built mansions in Spokane Valley. I remember four-car garages and rooms dedicated to gift wrapping.

@Brachiator:
if you like 4 hour commutes and endless strip malls. Then ignore the wildfires and mudslides.

Parts of the state are gorgeous and many places have ideal climate but having been a visitor to the bay area over the last 60 years and having family in Orange County we have visited a few times it is not attractive to me. If I were a billionaire I’d have a place by Julian or Banner as a get away and maybe a place like Willow Creek.

@daryljfontaine:
Our favorite game of that set is Split the Room. The what-if scenarios are great with a large enough gathering of players. The challenge to create a what-if scenario that doesn’t go too far to become one-sided can be frustrating but very rewarding when executed.

We also enjoyed Patently Stupid a lot as well as you’ll often have people of varying drawing talent trying to describe their inventions. The only drawback is the long set-up to get to the actual presentations.

If I have to pick my favorite game from all of Jackbox Game sets, it would have to be Fibbage 3. It’s the game where the person who can bullshit the most convincing lie wins. It’s fantastic, and the theme music is an earworm that you won’t mind getting stuck in your head.

About 20 years ago, I thought maybe the internet would cure rural blight by bringing greater access to knowledge, increasing interaction between cultures, and opening up new opportunities via telecommuting. None of that seems to have panned out so far, or at least not in a sufficiently widespread way.

I worked in the industry all through the 1990s. Below a certain population density — think a town of a few thousand people — broadband internet access service is a money loser. The fixed costs for cabling, electronics, and maintenance of those is simply too high unless it can be spread across enough subscribers.

Anecdotally, when I worked for the state legislature here, and a bill that would have provided broadband subsidies in rural areas had failed, I spoke with one of the rural members. His summary basically came down to, “Telling the Front Range suburbs that they’re not ‘real’ Colorado, and are out of touch with ‘real Colorado values’, which my rural colleagues have done for years, is not a good warm-up for coming hat-in-hand to ask for another subsidy.”

The oil industry abandoned Tulsa for Houston, for the reasons stated above – executives, and high skill technical workers, do not want to live in the land of Oral Roberts. Most of the aviation work has gone for the same reason. It also lacks large public sector institutions, which serve as cultural and economic drivers for small and mid-sized cities.

It does indeed. I live in south Florida, and the weather trumps everything else for me. When folks here trash Florida they never mention where they live themselves. They just want to engage in virtue signaling, and claim some imagined moral superiority for not living in a shitty place like Florida.

I am just grateful that those knuckledraggers don’t want to live here.

We’re receiving a number of post-fire refugee Californians here in New Mexico, although we’re not quite contiguous and the surfing is lacking. But, the landscape is beautiful, the weather is good, and we’re increasingly blue. Education and the economy are serious challenges, though. Hopefully our new blue governor and state legislature can usher in much-needed improvements.

About 20 years ago, I thought maybe the internet would cure rural blight by bringing greater access to knowledge, increasing interaction between cultures, and opening up new opportunities via telecommuting.

Instead, rural ignorance was exported into a fertile feeding ground of idiots just smart enough to use a computer.

@mark:
There are counties in CA which have larger populations than several states. Combined. And there are 58 counties in CA. Yes some of them are rural and have lowish populations. Alpine has 1,120, LA has 10,163,507. Eight of them have populations over a million, some well over. A few more are close to that.
Even in the house we are under represented because of the house rule that limits the number of members rather than the number of constituents per house member. Not sure if more house members would make it better or more unruly but it would at least be fair.
There is nothing wrong with a state having a small population but in a representative government it is wrong that populations are unevenly and unfairly represented.

Yeah, even if for some reason the spouse and I needed to leave California, we would probably stay in the West if we have a choice (most likely Oregon or Washington). I suppose there’s a possibility we might have to go back to IL for family reasons, but that’s pretty safely blue, too.

Get more States! Approve Statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. which already have majorities that want it.

Support for statehood within Puerto Rico seems underwhelming. In a 2017 referendum 97% supported it, but there was only a 23% turnout. So although people who care about the issue overwhelmingly support a path to statehood, it seems that most are indifferent.

Why should a majority in Congress be expected to support statehood for Puerto Rico when a majority of Puerto Ricans don’t seem to care?

@Ohio Mom: Sometimes I just tell people that if they tell me their politics I’m going to tell them mine and I know they don’t want to hear mine. That ends a few rants. Of course the not having a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent also applys.

@Brachiator:
I moved to OH and worked there for 11 yrs. Over all it wasn’t that bad. Of course most of the people I knew, who were from OH wanted to leave, but one member of the household wouldn’t leave, or mom didn’t want to move… I heard two guys at the gym talking one day, first – I thought you were moving, second – waiting for the kid to graduate HS, tomorrow is his last day, and we are fucking out of here. This was rather common, love it or can’t stand it. When I quit my job I’d spent a year deciding what to do but where to live took about 5 minutes. It wasn’t a difficult decision. I’ve traveled to 46 states, lived in 4 of them, I knew where I didn’t want to live.

@Michael Cain: Thank you for the clarification. Based on my quickie research into Census classifications, New Mexico and California are part of Region 4 (West), but not in the same Divisions (8-Mountain and 9-Pacific, respectively). So we’re somewhat geographically linked, but not contiguous, which means being in actual contact, touching along a boundary or at a point.

@O. Felix Culpa: This mostly lifelong San Diego resident knows Mexican food. Even NorCal’s is just not up to snuff (I lived there 13 years, and NorCal is great, except their Mexican food, which…is shit. There. I said it. It is shit. Been waiting years to say that.)

Yours is damn fine. Everything I had there was fantastic. It’s not SoCal Mexican food (Mexican food is very regional) but it can stand shoulder to shoulder with ours, no shame. The whole red tribe/green tribe thing is odd. They’re both great.

Arizona (where I’ve lived for almost 40 years now, most of my adult life) is overall a conservative state, and always has been. However, it’s less so than ever before and has even become a light shade of purple federally, with 5 of 9 House of Rep districts now in Democratic hands (had been 4 of 9 from ’16). And Kyrsten Sinema, of course, as our new U.S. Senator (replacing that well-known Profile-in-Courage, Jeff Flake).

Complex set of reasons for this slight nudge to the left for U.S. Congress (the state lege and governator still R, unsurprisingly), but it’s mostly due to better turnout for Dem voters in Maricopa County (the mostly-Dem city of Phoenix and its mostly-R suburbs, along with lots of very empty desert) and in Tucson (highest concentration of Dems in the state).

Some rural voters voting Dem helped, certainly (especially in the very-rural Congressional district #1 — held by Democratic-incumbent Tom O’Halleran — comprising the enormous north- and central-eastern portion of the state, containing the Navajo, Hopi, Apache, and Pima Indian Rez’s, along with a number of small, mostly Mormon farming communities, and the small-ish college town of Flagstaff).

But it was mostly better turnout among urban voters that flipped Congressional district #2 (containing about 2/3 of Tucson) from R to D, and provided Sinema her margin of victory. So, no, don’t “abandon” the conservative rural areas, but, really, the focus (in AZ, anyway) needs to stay on urban voter turnout.

@NotMax: You may well be right, but whatever the details of the infighting, I suspect Congress is unlikely to support a push for statehood based on those numbers. Heaven helps those who help themselves.

@Schlemazel: I remember when Stockman went public with his ‘seeing the light’ moment. It was still possible at that time to be somewhat honestly shocked and surprised when finding out what was really going on behind closed doors.

It does indeed. I live in south Florida, and the weather trumps everything else for me. When folks here trash Florida they never mention where they live themselves. They just want to engage in virtue signaling, and claim some imagined moral superiority for not living in a shitty place like Florida.

Never really trashed Florida for being Florida, although it is obviously the butt of jokes recently. And with some reason.

OTOH, I feel superior to the ignorant and bigoted, wherever they live. And there’s no shame in being ignorant. Only shame in remaining so.

The real solution to Deplorableville is the stop it being Deplorableville, the Derpstates need to be brought into the 21st century kicking and screaming like the New Deal had to do to get them into the 20th Century. But there is no future in a state who whole economy is farming and mining.

OTOH, I feel superior to the ignorant and bigoted, wherever they live.

Except Florida is a 49.5%/50.5% state, and when folks trash “Florida” they are implicitly trashing everyone who lives there.

Posters on BJ would never dream of trashing (say) people of color or lesbians or immigrants as a group, though there are undoubtedly many assholes in those groups. Yet they happily toss that mindset out the window when it comes to trashing states that don’t meet their level of approval.

1) Oil moved yrs before Oral Roberts U opened. Altho the ministry was here. (Tent ministry was started in 47, I think,).

2) The reason the oil companies moved, so we in Tulsa were told, was thar TX had no income tax when they moved. And execs wanted TO KEEP THEIR MONEY!!

Before they moved Tulsa had an annual?? International Oil Exposition. It was a fabulous thing to go to.

The U of Tulsa still has a pretty strong oil engineering program I believe. A result of the oil industroy being centered here.

Their are still oil exec/founder mansions in Tulsa.

The Phillips petroleum company–the family mansion Philbrook was donated to Tulsa for an art museum. The Philtower building in downtown Tulsa was theirs and was donated to the Boy Scouts. As was their Philmont Ranch.

@TenguPhule: Never had the pleasure of visiting Hawaii and have met very few residents of the state in person or online. But you have singlehandedly exploded the “laid back, friendly Hawaiian” stereotype for me. So, thanks for that. I think.

@O. Felix Culpa: I like New Mexico. I am not trashing it or the other states, just pointing out that many Californians have been decamping to multiple states that might not have California’s attribute for some time now.

@Betty Cracker: From your photos, Florida looks lovely. I would certainly love to visit. More than the infamous Florida man or woman, its the Florida critters that I am most afraid of. The gators, the pythons and most of all the flying roaches.

…just pointing out that many Californians have been decamping to multiple states that might not have California’s attribute for some time now.

With tongue only somewhat in cheek, I have suggested in the past that westerners in general require that some version of this happen from time to time — city skyline with snow-capped peaks in the background. I’m not sure Phoenix can manage it any more, even as a fluke. Maybe substitute monsoon thunderstorms.